Hand-Me-Down Blues: How To Stop Depression From Spreading In Families

A powerful family-based approach to understanding and treating depression that goes way beyond Prozac. Many people have been led to believe that depression is caused simply by a chemical imbalance in the brain and as a result they look to science for convenient answers hoping that a capsule a day will keep depression away. Unfortunately this narrow focus on biology and the use of medications has often led people to overlook other important influences such as how our families can affect emotional health in powerful ways.. In Hand-Me-Down Blues Dr. Michael Yapko carefully describes how the family can play a crucial role in the development of and recovery from depression. Parents introduce their children to various life experiences and inevitably reveal their own values perspectives and biases. Children typically learn to interpret life events in the same way their parents do and their interpretations can be a basis for depression. Once depression strikes it distorts family relationships splintering families as it spreads from one person to another like a virus. Thus children can inherit depression less from their parents genes and more from their parents attitudes and behaviors.